The pastureland crept up the sides of the foothills of the Hob, and soon we were traveling along a shepherds' track between the rock walls that fenced the pastures. Generations of farmers had combed the rocks from the land and used them for fences and buildings, leaving behind land well-fenced and less rocky. Land that once had been poor had become, over centuries of management, rich and fertile.
The grass in the pastures here were already three times as long as the grasses in Fallbrook's fields. Even the pastures that had been recently grazed were longer than…
Torch halted, giving the Lass time to aim a nip at his rump—though even she wasn't so bold as to actually bite him.
"What's wrong?" asked Wandel before I could.
"You tell me," answered Kith, his gaze drifting around the valley spread below us.
I followed his gaze, looking for something—but there was nothing to be seen.
"Faran's breath!" I swore, standing in my stirrups for a better view. There was nothing to be seen.
"Where are the cattle?" asked Wandel. "These are cattle fields, you can see where they've grazed—but they're all gone."
"No sheep either," added Kith softly. "Nor any people. We should be able to see the men in the fields and the people going in and out of town. Look down by that little croft. There's laundry hung to dry and half of it swept loose from the pins."
I knew the others were thinking raiders. It was possible the group harassing Fallbrook was part of a larger raiding party or even an enemy army—but a feeling that chilled me down to the bone told me the answer was worse than an army. A feeling and the memory of a vision of men dissolving into ash didn't allow for so mundane an answer.
The quick glimpse I'd had of the wolf bones became more sinister. I didn't say anything, though, merely sent Duck after the other two horses as they headed down the trail to Auberg. What could I have said?
We passed the croft with the hanging laundry first. There were a few chickens in the yard: small and scrawny, half-grown chicks. The men rode past the trail to the house but, on impulse, I turned in. Kith and Wandel stopped to wait for me.
The grass was knee-deep, so it wasn't until something crunched under Duck's feet that I realized there were bones scattered here and there throughout the yard. I dismounted and kicked some of them out from under the grass.
They were clean as if someone had boiled the flesh from them—chicken mostly, though some of them might have been goose. Nearer the clothesline I saw the bones of a dog. A basket sat nearby, half full of washing.
I led Duck around the fluttering clothes. A brightly striped kerchief was still wrapped around the skull of the woman who had been hanging laundry.
Not raiders, I thought. There was no sign the woman had met an untimely end by ax or knife. It might have been a plague that killed her. There were some that swept through towns, killing entire populations. Most of those were mageborn, but some of the natural diseases could do it, too.
If this were a plague, we shouldn't go into town. If this were plague, it couldn't have happened very long ago. The bones were yellowish, almost greasy looking, with dark spots on the long bones of her arm. Newly stripped bones that had lain there for no more than a month.
I'd seen an army turned to bone, then ash: it hadn't been a plague. But what madman would have loosed such a spell here? Auberg was no threat to anyone.
I sat beside the skeleton and touched her wrist gently. The bones were dry against my fingers. I wondered what the unknown mage who'd stripped the land of magic bindings had done with the power he'd acquired. Duck touched the top of my head with his nose, worried about my unaccustomed place at his feet.
I closed my eyes and tried to see what had happened to the woman. I tried to put aside all of my speculations. For a long time, nothing came to me. Visions all the time when I didn't want them, but they were harder to call on purpose. My right leg started to go to sleep.
I heard hoofbeats approaching. Kith and Wandel must have gotten tired of waiting. I opened my eyes and turned to look…
A bloodmage clad in black and red with arcane symbols climbing his sleeves stood alone in a gray tower that looked out over the city. Some of the runes worked into his clothing I knew from Gram—calls for health and well-being.
The man turned, letting his face touch the lamplight.
It was the face of a man eaten from inside by his magic. I knew what it was because Moresh's mage was showing signs of it. Father said it was because bloodmagic made the bones go soft. What this man's original features might have been was impossible to tell.
"I told you that we would lose this fight, my lord," he said. His voice was only a harsh whisper, but it carried power.
Someone made an answer, inaudible—but the effect on the mage was electrifying. "I have done all I could. Do you accuse me of treachery?" He listened, then replied even more softly. "A truce? What would he take in return for truce when he knows we have already lost?"
Madness lit his face briefly, then he closed his eyes, rubbing one of the black runes with his left hand. When his eyes opened, there was something sane dwelling there, but his left hand still moved on the runes, which glittered with an eerie yellow light.
In the manner of a man overtired by work, he repeated himself, but the dangerous edge to his voice was gone. "What have you offered him?"
This time I could hear the other man. "I sent your son to him with a sealed message which he has read several hours since. I told him the boy was his to do with as he pleased—like you, he is a bloodmage. What strength would he get from a mage as powerful as your son? But perhaps the boy was able to defeat him as you never have? The rituals you go through take so much time—perhaps you can do something about him before your son dies? Perhaps the war is not so hopeless after all?"
The bloodmage closed his eyes again and moved his right hand, the left one still tracing the runes on his sleeve. When he opened his eyes, he appeared calm and his left hand dropped to his side—but there was nothing sane about him. "You are correct. There is something I can do to defeat him—I discovered it a month ago. Who could have told you? Ah, no matter. All the reason I had for not doing it is dead with my son. For your part in this you shall not die here."
The mage spread his hands and closed his eyes again. An aura surrounded him, growing gradually, making first him, then the room, and last the tower glow red with the power he called to him. It took a long time to gather and barely an instant to send on its way, taking with it the mage himself.
My vision fell away from the tower and the king who sat there alone. I traveled some great distance outside the city before so much as a blade of grass survived the bloodmage's wrath. Far from the city, empty battlefields were covered with bits and pieces of metal scattered here and there across fields of yellow flowers where butterflies danced…
The butterflies were rather abruptly obscured by Wandel's mustached face. I blinked at the harper stupidly for a bit while I slowly realized that Kith was standing beside me. My arm ached. When I looked down, fresh blood spotted the bandages.
"I'm fine," I said, surprised at how steady my voice was.
"What did you see?" asked Kith.
I stood up stiffly, then swung my uninjured arm to indicate the dress-clad bones. "She was killed by the same thing that killed all the cattle in the fields—I'll wager we could find their bones under all that grass. It killed everything here larger than these chickens. The king's bloodmage pulled the bindings from the land to destroy everything he could reach. And he reached as far as Auberg."